04. Birth of Flux and Anchor (22 page)

"No, only corpses. The same goes for virtually all multi-cellular animal life. However, as you must know, we can take a butchered cow and make an infinite number of steaks and stews if the cuts are good. Dead matter is replicable, as is vegetable and mineral matter.''

That was at least reassuring, although it only confirmed what he already knew. He had been concerned with the implications of all that to the economic system of not only Earth but New Eden as well. Why work when you can materialize what you need with a minimum of effort? The answer was that this was precisely why self-sufficiency was being introduced, and with New Eden totally terraformed, mass production of such things would be self-limiting. In case of emergency, needed materials could and would be produced by the managing company, but only in case of emergency. Otherwise, all Flux resources would be diverted to research and development projects.

"I think you'd better stop here," Seventeen warned. "If I see the direction of your questioning clearly, there's no way to stop you from being flagged."

He flicked on his microphone. "Connie? You willing to face the folks in red?"

"If
we
don't have the right to ask these questions, and the clearances for them, then who does? I'd say go for it. We've got a need to know."

"O.K., then. Seventeen, assuming you can do this resurrection business, do you also have preventive-medicine routines? Can you repair someone, cure them of internal injuries or diseases, in this manner?"

The computer sounded almost relieved. "Of course. That's well known to the medical section. However, unless they could be brought here or shipped to the Gate, they would have to be in a free-form Flux environment for me to do it. Finished terraformed areas like the core here remove my grid from being able to do fine work of that type. I can erase, even erase and reform exactly, what is above a terraformed grid square, but I can't alter it."

"Could you, say, repair those things leading to aging? Say, could you make me physically sixteen again?"

"You're flagged. I warned you. You pursued this line too long."

"O.K., so we're flagged. Yes or no?"

"Yes."

"We could redesign ourselves—singly or even en masse?"

"Yes, of course. However, the larger the group, the more common the program would have to be and the more least common denominator the desired sum. Um—I must warn you now that any release of any of this sort of information to anyone beyond yourselves without a specific clearance and need to know is a criminal offense under company codes."

"I'd already been told a lot of this. I just didn't really remember what was nagging at me yesterday until now, when that conversation came back. Seventeen—has that sort of modification ever been performed on anyone on New Eden against the will or desire of the subject?"

"Sorry, Toby, that information is at your classification level but beyond your need-to-know flag. All further information on this subject must be obtained only with clearance from higher authority."

"That's all right. Seventeen. I'm just surprised that they didn't throw that blocker in earlier. I'm not an idiot. I can form easy logical assumptions based on my own programming knowledge."

"They didn't throw it in earlier because of your position," the computer explained. "As a department head in programming, there are a million cross-referenced topics that you might have to have a need to know. Until your flag point, all your questions could be cross-related to your job and your responsibilities for public safety, individual safety, and administrative continuity."

He sighed. "O.K., Seventeen. I found out what I wanted to know. I guess it's time now for Connie and me to slink back to our tents and see who shows up."

"Within my limits, I will try to protect you."

It sounded so very sincere, he really believed it.

They switched off and he walked over to Connie. "Still think it's a fun academic exercise?"

She shrugged. "So we'll get a grilling. So what? We're a stable pair. We won't blurt this out in ads all over the camp, and it's handy to know. It brings up a whole lot of possibilities for the future. We're on the driver's side of this thing, and we work for the same bosses they do. I sure as hell ain't gonna be goin' around telling folks that if I get knocked off I'll come back but they won't 'cause they're too junior. You?"

He thought about it and knew deep down that she was right. "Yeah—that's why they let me ask that line of questioning and gave me straight answers. They've told us we're among the elect, and if we aren't a good little boy and girl, they can just tell Seventeen to consider us peons. I think they've got us cold now."

"Well, what else do they need?"

"I don't know," he responded worriedly, "but just consider the full implications of all this. They could just as easily decide to run
us
through one of their little programs."

When the summons came, it was from an unexpected source.

They had been told of the Special Projects Unit, and had even seen and socialized with some of the members of that group. Along with Landscape Engineering and Main Computer Systems, they were the other group with unlimited and unrestricted access to Seventeen. They had priority, but they had never abused it, and they worked out of their own offices with good security up top, almost inside the central mast. Many of them were computer experts, and some were former Kagan employees who had worked on the 7800 developmental project. They had made themselves available and invaluable to the other two departments, and there was certainly no feeling or suspicion that they had anything to do with Security other than have the girls and boys in red guard their offices.

Thus, it was with great surprise that both Toby and Connie received requests to meet with Special Projects in the top offices early the next morning. It wasn't totally convenient, and both felt some suspicion that it had something to do with the computer flags, but there was no question that they would go. Security was expecting them, and passed them right along to a large and comfortable but still unfinished head office.

Two people rose to greet them. One was a dark, handsome, bearded Sikh in the red uniform of Security and a crimson turban. He wore colonel's insignia, which made him very high up indeed in the Security hierarchy. The other was a woman who sat behind a large and somewhat cluttered desk. She was small, almost delicately pretty, with strong Japanese features and long silky black hair. She was relaxed and casually dressed and looked far too young to be "Patricia Suzuki, M.D." as it said on the nameplate on the desk.

"Please come in and sit down," the woman behind the desk said, rising and gesturing to two comfortable-looking chairs angled to face her from her left while the Sikh sat similarly on her right. "I'm Patty Suzuki, and this is Colonel Singh." The two engineers nodded and took their seats. They could take Dr. Suzuki, but the red-clad colonel was something else. "I assume you both know why you're here."

"I think so," Haller replied. "I'm not sure it's necessary though."

"I think it is," the woman in charge responsed. "We're at a crossroads with the two of you that we anticipated, since we've been at this crossroads many times before with all sections dealing directly with the Kagan series. It's quite natural for you to pursue the line you did and to wonder about it. If you didn't, you wouldn't be good scientists, and if you weren't somewhat concerned by the ethical implications of it, you wouldn't be the kind of people to hold responsible positions. We already have landscaping personnel working with us. That's what this project is really all about. Exploring the full implications of the digitizing and programming process on human beings, not things. We must know just what we really have here, not merely for the sake of science but for the sake of security, but this sort of thing must be kept quite confidential. I'm sure you can see why."

They both nodded. "It didn't take a lot of imagination to think of what the news simply of—what? Resurrection? Eternal  youth?—might have on the general  population.   We'd either choke in people in just a few generations or we'd have massive riots and wind up with a police state, hated by the masses."

"Exactly." Suzuki seemed very pleased at the answers. "It's a pretty cold thing to have to do, but it has to be done. I'm a psychiatrist, by the way. I began work with this team back at Site K, the orbiting lab and station, when we first saw the implications of our research. When we got our first 7800 and saw how much more we could do with it than with the 7240—and the 7240 is awesome in its own right—we knew we had to continue to work here or someone else would without authority, direction, or the benefits of our previous work. That's what we're doing here."

Both of the engineers nodded, understanding the whole line. Both were fascinated in spite of the potential.

"I suspected as much, but I didn't expect to be privy to so much detail," Toby Haller told her. "I get the strong impression that this is leading somewhere."

Pandit Singh spoke for the first time. "Dr. Haller. Dr. Makapuua, I am not merely the guardian of this knowledge and this project. My business is paranoia in the same way as Dr. Suzuki deals in it, but mine is a different direction. She is paid to cure it: I am paid to
be
paranoid, to think that way all the time. To keep things secure and safe. I must be a paranoid, but also I am paranoid over what it is I am safeguarding. I will, for example, never fully trust you with this information. We will keep an eye on both of you, and if it gets out due to your actions, intentional or not. I will trace it back to you and you will pay dearly for it. This I think you know without my going into detail." It was said so casually, so matter-of-factly, that it was far more chilling than it otherwise would have been.

"The fact is." Suzuki put in, trying to get things back to a friendly basis, "we need more help than we have. We very much need the aid and support of top personnel like yourselves who are in daily contact with the computer and use it in its most elaborate fashion. Primarily, we need you as extra eyes and ears. To fully understand the colonel's fear of what he is guarding, you'll have to see it for yourself. Come. Let's take a walk."

They went out of the big office and down a still unfinished hallway, through two more security checkpoints, and finally reached a secure lab one floor below that was set up very much like their own experimental lab on the second floor. The difference was that here a grid had been run across a rectangular floor which was otherwise barren, and the computer interfaces were in a sealed booth in front of it. Also, suspended from the ceiling in a number of places were automatic guns controlled from Security's main outpost just off the main level. Two computer technicians staffed the Overrider and Guard positions, one a quite beautiful young woman in lab whites, the other a bearded man in Security reds.

"You know the system of justice for Populations," the colonel said. "Each cultural group judges its own if it's within that group. If it's cross-cultural, the company supplies a judge, and jurors are chosen equally by the offending groups." He paused, leaned over, and said into a speaker, "Bring in the prisoner."

A door opened to one side of the rectangular grid, and Security troops brought in a big Semitic-looking man with a full beard, long hair, and blazing eyes. His hands and feet were manacled, and he had trouble walking. They took him to the center, where restraints were built into the floor, and chained him there, removing the rest. He was stark naked.

"This is Hasim Kashakamani," Colonel Singh told them. "Hasim is a Suni Moslem whose family has been feuding, back and forth, with Shi'ite families over a parched piece of arid nothing for a couple of centuries now. He is the eldest survivor of five sons, and took it upon himself back home to keep up the family-retribution business. His family does in fact have wealth and good connections by marriage, so when he was apprehended in the act of attempted murder, they managed to get him assigned to Populations here instead of the usual messy trial and punishment. It was agreed to by both sides that it would be a good idea, since permanent exile to a new life would remove him as a martyr to his brothers and thus this might end the feuding back home. He agreed, and has been a model colonist up to now. He's quite bright, and had been in line to supervise one of the first farm collectives you are to create."

Connie just stared at him. Toby said, "I gather he wasn't a good model after all."

"To say the least. We solved seven open rape cases, all of Shi'ite women, when we caught him in the act. I'd like to say we suspected all along, but it was a matter of luck. Dr. Suzuki's staff looked at him and ultimately determined that he was incorrigible, that he was so filled with hatred and violence, he kept seeing his enemies in every Shi'ite he met, and this was the result—a generalized action that struck at random, causing pain, anguish, and fear throughout the still small Shi'ite community, male as well as female. He was tried by a combined court and unanimously sentenced to death. As in all capital cases since we've set up this project, we have provided a matrixed dead body for the victims to see and brought the prisoner here. It is the only moral and ethical way to get human subjects."

They stared at the fierce-looking man, who seemed to be staring back defiantly.

"The easiest way to configure a program of this nature is to go for the basics." Suzuki added. "What we have represented here is violence, a high aggressive level, hatred, and delusions of grandeur. He really believes God commanded his acts. He believes God will save him now. With such an extreme and complex case, a cure, if possible, would take years, perhaps decades, even with our best drugs and therapists. We could break him, but it would reduce him to a vegetable, useless in our colony. The trick, then, is to save the talents and intelligence we have while removing everything else." She turned to the white-clad woman. "Run digitizing routine."

Both the woman and the security man at Guard said nothing, but both Toby and Connie knew that they were in full contact with the computer—Seventeen itself, in fact—and calling up routines and programs that were off limits to any but those at this console.